JOURNAL for the SCIENTIFIC STUDY of RELIGION The Construction, Preliminary Validation, and Correlates of a Dream-Specific Scale for Mystical Experience ROBERT E. SEARS School of Intercultural Studies Fuller Theological Seminary This study aimed to create and test a dream-specific version of Hood’s Mysticism (M) Scale for the purpose of studying dreaming mystical experience. Factor analysis of the Spiritual Dreams Scale (SDS), based on data collected from 289 adults affiliated with an American evangelical Christian school, clearly resulted in three factors in accordance with prior studies of the M Scale. However, the factor composition of the SDS did not identically resemble the findings of previous studies of the M Scale. Instead, the three-factor solution suggested a Jamesian interpretation according to which the factors were labeled mystical psychology (passivity), perceived alternate reality (ineffability), and noesis. Scores on the SDS shared significant positive correlations with scores for absorption, dream beliefs, dream recall, and kataphatic prayer. A scale for apophatic prayer failed to share a significant correlation with the SDS. Keywords: Mysticism Scale, dreams, mystical experience, William James, Ralph Hood. INTRODUCTION Dreams are imaginative experiences that may include thoughts, feelings, activities, visions, auditions, and other sensations occurring during sleep. Although many dreams are simply re- garded as bizarre or mundane, some dreams are considered to be important and even religiously significant. Dreams have been the impetus for new religious movements—Islam being a promi- nent example in this regard. Within many religious traditions, dreaming is viewed as a medium by which divine or spiritual beings appear and/or give messages (Tedlock 2005). The Bible is replete with examples of persons who receive divine guidance or warning through dreams. These types of prophetic or precognitive dreams have played an important role throughout Christian history (e.g., Constantine’s dream ultimately led to the conversion of the Roman empire) and continue to be an area of popular religious concern (consider, e.g., Goll 2004; Goll and Goll 2006; Kelsey 1991). Alongside or sometimes in conjunction with these prophetic types of dreams are dreams of a “numinous” or mystical quality (Kelsey 1991). This latter kind of dream is the special concern of the present article. Dwyer provides a vivid account of this sort of dream from a Hare Krishna devotee: Radha Mohan claimed that in the midst of the dream he now experienced a sense of being at “one with Krishna,” located in a sacred landscape in which direct communion with the deity ensued .... Radha Mohan now could see nothing at all, the blackness that came, a blackness confounding all sight or vision, being the actual moment of Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Drs. Sherwood Lingenfelter and Ryan Hornbeck for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this document and during the preliminary stages of this study. Thanks also go to Dr. Joey Fung for her help with the statistical procedures and results presentation. Correspondence should be addressed to Robert Sears, Fuller Theological Seminary, Attn: Center for Missiological Research, 135 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena, CA 91182. E-mail: robertsears@fuller.edu Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2015) 54(1):134–155 C  2015 The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion